Confessions of a TV junkie

I have been going through what Bone kindly calls my “sad time.” It gets better every year but this year has been weird. South Carolina has been in the news a bit too much, and I went to that 9/11 Memorial that turned out to be a radical right call to arms. No I’m not letting that drop quietly into the humid Southern air.

I have never been a big TV person and have all kinds of rules for watching. To watch during the day, except for “historic events,” it must be raining as if the sky wants to fall into the earth, and I must be officially sick. Only I never have any desire to watch TV when I’m sick–that’s how I know I’m getting better. That and cleaning everything in sight. I haven’t really been sick here but the one time I sorta was I washed the linen in the middle of being sick because I could. Then I became totally confused and didn’t know if I was getting better or not.

While I don’t have a TV in my bedroom, I have a flat screen one in the living room. Had I known about LED’s I might have waited but I’m cheap and waited this long for an LCD….

True confessions: I love Mad Men, Monk,Friday Night Lights (great choices) NCIS (weird for me but the sets are great and Mark Harmon, Republican that he is, is the stuff of middle year crushes. Plus the Goth CSI (but more) is a great role model for all the girls I know in high school and college.

This is leading up to the third show. The original began when I was an SSI Claims Rep. It was a brain drain job; I would come home and need to chill. It was still on when I went to grad school and led a woman’s group for eight (let’s not beat around the bush) very old ladies in varying stages of cognition and most weren’t ambulatory. I made getting them to their rooms into a game. I would have to do it before 7:40 so I could be home by eight. The nursing home wasn’t renovated yet and usually I walked up and down the six flights of stairs but I couldn’t walk the women much as I wanted to. My reward was Melrose Place

I like the new one more. This is based on two episodes where the sets starred at least to me. I love great sets. I tape shows I have already seen on HGTV for reasons that remain unclear to me especially since I end up deleting 9/10ths of them. Actually I delete most programs before watching them. I love doing the whole delete thing more than I love TV usually.

Saturday night, around midnight, I couldn’t find anything I wanted to watch–1,000 stations and countless on-demands ones. Being cheap I only like the free ones and up to $1.99. I couldn’t find The Big Leibowski which I heard was on for Big Leibowski weekend in Manhattan.

I was channel surfing and hit on something maybe I would watch for a second–and yes I was angry I had deleted all the HGTV shows. The sound and picture went off. I tried unplugging the box, rebooting it, played with all the controls on the side of the TV and on the TV and cable box. None of the 2,000 usual tricks worked. It was time to call Time Warner Cable. I could have waited until morning but being obsessive….I tell the woman everything I had done: “That’s nice but I only handle phone issues and what is your email address?” This is Time Warner Cable. When I gave her my telephone number—I get it from them–she could access my life story. Or not.

She finally let me speak to a level four tech which was the real reason I was calling at midnight. They’re easier to speak to and can help you. My cable box just wouldn’t reboot. We were up to exchanging life stories when he asked if I wanted an appointment with a real life tech. I guess I did but could we just try five more minutes? I explained that I wouldn’t have cared last week but this week is premiere week. He understood and we waited. My TV came back to life!

I’m kind of proud of my TV fixation. I didn’t have a DVR in the townhouse and found myself scheduling things around NCIS. That was bad and kind of embarrassing though in retrospect if I hadn’t gone to the secret meeting of the Democrats on Inauguration night at a bar where people smoke and I hated the food which I needed as I had been too excited to eat all day I might not have gotten a cold. Or maybe I would have and maybe NCIS wasn’t on that night–but I missed the best part of the Inagural parties and I really wanted to see one night where all was right with the administration as I knew the honeymoon couldn’t last.

President Obama on Letterman, tonight. I know he’s over-exposed but I love Letterman though I have been taping Jon Stewart…..

A few weeks ago CLo, W and I went to our almost-local multiplex and saw Inglorious Bestards. It was the 9PM Thursday show We had a private screening as we were the only people in the theater. We might have been the only people aside from staff in the whole theater. I can get used to not waiting an hour for a movie. I really can.